www.brillig.com/debt_clock/faq.html
A: Here is a pie chart showing the makeup, or ownership, of the National Debt as of December 1998. Ownership of the National Debt As you can see, the largest slice of the pie, over 40%, is owed to the F ederal Reserve Bank and to other government accounts; that is, this par t of the Debt is owed by one part of the government to another.
The Treasury Bulletin is the best place to find the latest information on this subject. Q: What is the difference between the Debt and the Deficit? A: The National Debt is the total amount of money owed by the government ; the federal budget deficit is the yearly amount by which spending exc eeds revenue. Add up all the deficits (and subtract those few budget su rpluses we've had) for the past 200+ years and you'll get the current N ational Debt. Reducing the deficit ju st means we're adding less to the Debt this year than we did last year. When are we going to start seeing the Debt actually go down? A: The National Debt on January 1st 1791 was just $75 million dollars.
From time to time, I've gotten e-mail saying that the above graph is fla wed -- it's just showing normal inflation. Well, I took the Debt number s from the above graph and converted them all to 2000 dollars. Picking a different year would not have changed the shape of the graph below, j ust its height: US National Debt, corrected for inflation (2000 dollars) As you can see, except for a rise at the end of World War II, the Debt r emained remarkably constant for nearly forty years when inflationary fo rces are taken into account. After 1983 however, with the notable excep tion of the Fiscal Years ending in September of 2000 and 2001, the tren d has been upward even when inflation is taken into account. Q: I looked at the Debt Clock yesterday and I think it showed a higher v alue than it does today. On average, the Debt is always rising but there ar e some day to day fluctuations which can cause the debt to actually go down for a day or two. The long term averages however, show that the De bt just keeps getting higher and higher. This was the first time in history the US N ational Debt surpassed the $7 trillion mark and came less than two year s after the Debt first passed $6 trillion. As a comparison, the National Debt took over six years to rise from $5 t rillion to $6 trillion. Every business day, the US Treasury d epartment releases new Debt figures for the previous day. I periodicall y get these figures and use them to adjust the Debt Clock's value so it remains accurate. I, or rather the CGI code I wrote for the Debt Clock, then calculate the current value of the Debt by a simple linear extrapolation between the recent date's value and the value for the debt about a year previously .
Population Clock and use this to calculate each person's share of the total debt. Q: Can I put a link from my page to your Debt Clock page? com/debt_clock/"><b>US National Debt Clock</b></a><p> </center> I do have one request though: Please do NOT put my GIF image of the curr ent debt figure directly onto your page. First of all, the number will always be a little out of date due to the way my CGI program is written . Secondly, visitors to your site won't be able to read the rest of my page and learn more about the Debt. Lastly, (and most importantly to me =) you are giving the impression that you, not I, did all the work nec essary to create and maintain the Debt Clock.
Concord Coalition, a group dedicated to eliminating federal budget deficits, at their toll-free number: 1-888-DEFICIT (1-888-333-42 48) and ask them your questions. You may very well end up joining the C oncord Coalition!
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